Queerness and being pathologized

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Hello, I am writing a paper for a class of mine about the pathologization of queerness and how it may contribute to a diagnosis as autistic or aspie. For example: failure to conform to gender roles being read as a sign of autism. If anyone has any stories or would like to chat please feel free to PM or post on this thread!

What class is this for?

I think that I first identified my (mild? - this modifier makes it sound like a disorder. That is not my intent.) gender queerness/fluidity while coming to terms with my recent diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome. I was in Jr. High at the time, and I remember the connection because a conversation I had with one of my friends from the private Christian school that I attended that was very brief but also very accepting and affirm. I can share the details if you are curious. I'm trying to say on topic.

My diagnosis helped me to understand my more "masculine" attributes. I was a fairly girly child in many respects - I liked dolls and dressup and Little House on the Prarie (the books) and Snow White. And dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were my first Autistic Obsession, as my mum recalls. I remember a lot of my childhood by her telling me about it, since I was very wrapped up in my own head at the time. Also I think the dinosaurs occured in the period right before I start having clear memories. Or maybe not. I'm digressing again.

I liked dinosaurs. I liked climbing up on the roof of our wood shed with a multipurpose nail manicuring tool that had a tiny knife blade and pretending that I was Cody (who I think I thought was a girl - to give context) from the Rescuer's Down Under freeing the Giant Eagle whose name I won't even try to spell here.

I think that my parent's finally got it through my head that Cody was a boy. Maybe they didn't. But I liked being Cody.

I cross-dressed, mostly for dressup or costumes, throughout... until now? Well now I sometimes crossdress just for lols or on accident (I am proud to say that I have been deemed a "cute guy" by a gay man) but I still am often very "girly" in my appearance. A little theatrical, a little vintage, a little victorian, a little gothic. Gender may vary.

Anyways. I can continue dissecting stories of my gender/sexuality. But that really is rambling. I would cut it down, but I typed all that stuff and while I'm pretty good at typing, i don't want to delete stuff that I took the trouble to think about and write.

I'm 22. Biologically female. Slightly genderqueer/fluid. Bisexual. Autistic,.

I don't feel like my diagnosis pathologized my masculine behaviour. I think it pathologized my social awkwardness - while the therapy I recieved afterwards and the greater self-awareness that the d/x gave me helped me overcome it, I struggle not to feel less human sometimes because of my difficulties in certain areas (social being one of the bigger ones, the other big one being anxiety). The feeling of inferiority makes social stuff more difficult than it would be otherwise sometimes. Other times I step up to the plate and look whomever I'm talking to square in the eye as I tell them about my experiences having Asperger's.

Anyways. I don't see my genderqueerness or bisexuality being pathologized by my D/x. It's actually helped me understand them. (The idea that Autism is "extreme male-brainedness" was the first breakthrough in that area for me.)

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions. I don't know when your paper is due, but I would love to help. I might have to ask my mom to tell me what I was like at the time I was diagnosed, since before/at that time I didn't percieve myself as autistic so much as everyone else as kinda dumb.

One more note to add: I mostly pass for neurotypical now. I was diagnosed as having "Moderate" Asperger's syndrome or something like that. I'm not sure to be proud of how much I've learned or ashamed of how much I've conformed. I'm mostly the former, since I can switch the latter off and on to some degree.

Thank you for reading this journal entry. Best of luck, flux! I will be following any other replies with avid interest .

[Puttin' on my doctor hat]

I tend to the view that this is part of a much broader trend to pathologize the widest possible spectrum of non-comformist behaviors.

Patients (or parents) seeking help often don't want to hear the response, "there's nothing wrong with you (or your child, as the case may be). Having made the decision to seek professional help, many people are by that point engaged in an exercise of bias confirmation. Once a patient can hang a label on themselves, they can then transfer responsibility for non-conformist behaviours to that label. Physicians' business model provides us with woefully insufficient time to properly interview a patient, let alone assess and diagnose a condition. Often the quickest and simplest solution for a patient is to reach for the prescription pad. The outrageous number of prescriptions for antidepressants in the United States (the latest figures I have seen suggest that 1 person in 10 has a prescription for them) is due, I suggest, to a destructive cycle in which pharmaceutical advertising creates an artificial demand, leading to self-diagnosis, and the search for a physician who will confirm that diagnosis, coupled with a medical system that deprives physicians of the means in which to properly advise patients.

While that time presssure is not, perhaps, so pressing on clinical psychologists, I suggest that the cycle is comparable. Parents compile a laundry list of presentations to suggest that their child's behavior is atypical, and then look for a label to attach to it.

In that environment, nonconformity with gender typical behaviour is just one more item on the laundry list.

I don't think LGTB people are likely to be misdiagnosed as autistic. There's a big difference between gender nonconforming behavior (which generally reflects behavior considered typical of the other gender) and the atypical behavior of autistics (which is generally not typical for either gender).

Thank you for the replies! This is for my anthropology class. My professor requires that I receive consent from you in order to write about your responses.

@Viola It's interesting that you did not have to struggle with pathologising of your gender fluidity. I wonder if that has to do with where you are from because in my case it did affect me. I guess that the inability to be properly "gendered" or an indifference towards gendering led me to speculate about this being the case. I think that I also heard around these forums that there are statistically more autism DXs for people within the LGBTQ than the straight world.

Yeah, I've heard that too. I may have posted which state I live in somewhere else on here, but I grew up in the one blue dot on a red map. Or to translate, an little island of liberality in a sea of close mindedness. Or a university town surrounded by farming communities.

Also, late d/x. Also, it wasn't a public thing.

If you need me to sign a consent form or something, pm me. I will be happy to help out.

The premise of your study is the exact opposite of what I've observed: that autistics are likely to be wrongly "pathologized" as being queer for not picking up on the social cues of how to perform their gender. An Aspie kid is more likely to be called a "fa***t" by his peers than a homosexual kid is likely to be called an Aspie...

Well I think it could go both ways.